An example of a for-profit consortium is a group of banks that collaborate to make a loan—also known as a syndicate. This type of loan is more commonly known as a syndicated loan. In England it is common for a consortium to buy out financially struggling football clubs in order to keep them out of liquidation.

Airbus Industries was formed in 1970 as a consortium of aerospace manufacturers. The retention of production and engineering assets by the partner companies in effect made Airbus Industries a sales and marketing company.[1] This arrangement led to inefficiencies due to the inherent conflicts of interest that the four partner companies faced; they were both shareholders of, and subcontractors to, the consortium. The companies collaborated on development of the Airbus range, but guarded the financial details of their own production activities and sought to maximize the transfer prices of their sub-assemblies.[2]

In 2001, EADS (created by the merger of French, German and Spanish Airbus partner companies) and BAE Systems (the British partner company) transferred their Airbus production assets to a new company, Airbus SAS. In return, they got 80% and 20% shares respectively. BAE would later sell its share to EADS.

Coopetition is a word coined from cooperation and competition. It is used when companies otherwise competitors collaborate in a consortium to cooperate on areas non-strategic for their core businesses. They prefer to reduce their costs on these non-strategic areas and compete on other areas where they can differentiate better.

For example, the GENIVI Alliance is a not-for-profit consortium between different car makers in order to ease building an in-vehicle infotainment system.